John Beasley wrote:
What interests me is finding a credible way of
describing what 'is'. If that's metaphysics, fine. What Pirsig contributes is the term 'quality',
which in my humble opinion really does have something going for it. In trying to keep it
simple, Pirsig threw out the baby with the bathwater. Quality seems a very complex term, but
worth exploring. The ongoing debate about quality and good in this forum barely seems to
get off the ground because of this mystical nonsense about everything being quality. (How do
I know? Pirsig told me so.) Surely we can do better than that. Struan's X is at least more
honest.
Clark writes:
Everybody is making the same mistake of trying to apply the terms Morality, Value, and Good to the concerns of humanity (sentience).
This is not what Pirsig said Morality, Value, and Good was. He applied the terms Quality, Morality, Value, and Good to the universe. He said that the naturally occurring universe as it came into being contained all of these concepts simply because it did come into being under the impetus of some force. Whether it was the second law of thermodynamics or what. I like to think of quality as being the driving force that caused the formation of the universe which was naturally Moral, Good, and had Value. EVERYTHING in the universe had these characteristics. This held true as long as there was nothing in the universe that could alter the process.
Now comes humanity with its trouble making brain. We have sentience and awareness and a desire to make everything suit us. We cannot always act in accordance with what is Moral and Good and has Value in terms of the universe (Pirsig's definition) because we do not completely understand the workings of the universe. Pirsig's Morality and Value and Good still applies to the universe and us in the same way that it did in the beginning but now we have been turned loose in the universe with the capability of doing harm but without the understanding to avoid doing it.
Pirsig gave us the "Many Truths" idea to allow us to slowly make our way back to universal morality as we slowly grew in understanding. We cannot discuss the morality of the Civil War or the dropping of the Atomic Bomb or any other human concern outside of Pirsig's definition of Morality and Good and Value without doing it in the context of the universal definition of those terms. We first have to ask two questions. Is it universally Moral and if so, is it moral in terms of human relations. If the answer to the first question is no then the answer to the second question is also no.
Can you see that this ethical process, first the Moral and Good and Valuable universe (God?) then the human struggle to remain compatible with the overriding universe (getting to heaven) if reminiscent of the current religions that come immediately to mind.
It looks to me like what Pirsig has done is to give us a rational God along with a rational way of striving toward Universal Morality. If the whole world accepted the MoQ there would be no more dozens of religions strewing hate and strife and fighting in their wake. We would be psychologically whole and satisfied. So you see, John, in this view EVERYTHING is moral and good and has value. Ken Clark
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